Learning and Tensions in Managerial Intercultural Encounters: A Dialectical Interpretation

Abstract

The article develops the literature on the dynamics of intercultural encounters in the context of western-led management learning in post-Soviet countries. The article is conceptual but the frameworks it proposes are informed by the authors' `learning histories' of their participation in a project to start a new management college in post-Soviet Azerbaijan. It is suggested that the various perspectives, or stages, in such encounters that are identified in the literature may be understood as a dialectical process that parallels Hegel's dialectics of self-consciousness. It is argued that this interpretation strengthens existing conceptualizations by adding new insights; such as that movement through the dialectic occurs by diminishing the horizons of intercultural conflict from inter-group through inter-personal to intra-personal tensions.